Around the world the challenges faced by tobacco control advocates are similar: accessing funding and other resources, influencing policy makers, the tobacco industry, the tobacco industry and the tobacco industry.

This is why it’s always useful to learn about routes that colleagues have taken to overcome these barriers. The Jamaica Coalition for Tobacco Control (JCTC) and the Healthy Caribbean Coalition (HCC) have recently published a document full of such experiences and advice, designed to assist those working in tobacco control and in the broader fight against non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

In South-East Asia, “The tobacco industry continues to interfere with, deter and thwart governments' efforts to protect public health through both overt and covert means,” says a new report by the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA).

In an effort to block plain packaging laws coming into force across the world, the tobacco industry keeps pedalling propaganda about links to rising amounts of illicit tobacco.

Pictured: HMRC's estimate of the size of the illicit tobacco market in the UK, plotted alongside the price of a pack of 20 cigarettes (in 2014 GPP). The illicit market has consistently fallen at a time when tobacco prices have increased